Busby quotes Glassco’s self-assessment as “trifler, dilettante, petit-maître,” and maintains this is too harsh. Certainly Glassco was more than a trifler and a dilettante — he pursued his writing for years under the most adverse conditions — but petit-maître sounds about right. It is not such a bad thing to be. Maîtres are rare in literature, grand or petit, and the sad ghost of this one may at least derive some satisfaction in knowing that the finest of his volumes, Memoirs of Montparnasse, is of permanent interest to readers.
The entire review can be found here.
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